Opportunity/School of Hard Knocks for UTEP

Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser. 

What is up is down and what is down is up.

One minute your conference hires the ultimate college football power broker, Chuck Neinas, as a consultant to help keep hold, and maybe improve, Conference USA. 

The next, you might be trying to avoid eye contact with him in the hall.

UTEP has decisions to make, because things are literally changing by the hour in college athletics.

Groucho Marx sang it best...

Here's a disturbing note: Dan Beebe, the commissioner of the beleaguered Big XII, is not going away.

I thought it was odd, but telling, that Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech held meetings to discuss each school's respective future, but we never heard a word that the commish was anywhere near the place.

Don't think that Beebe is just having to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to his denouement as a conference capo, though. Beebe believes he has something that might save his job.

Actually, 140 million somethings. For starters.

Yes, reports of the Big XII's death are greatly exaggerated. Others called it, and we will join them.

And we're hearing Commissioner Beebe would like to invite some like-minded friends to join his party of five. Names like Houston, SMU, Memphis, Brigham Young, Air Force and maybe even Utah, unless the Texas Aggies have other ideas.

The Big XII's by-laws say that nine votes is what would be necessary to kill the conference, but only seven appear to be leaving. Thus, it would be hard to think that any of the five remaining schools would cast a vote to blow up their only means of conference support.

And why would they when each departing member of the conference has to leave an eight-figure buyout at the exit before it uses same?

Want to leave in two years? That's $10 million. Want to leave after just one year? A cool $20 million.

Nebraska announced its intentions of playing in the Big Ten by 2011, which surprised the heck out of the rest of the conference, according to Orangebloods.com's Chip Brown. The Huskers want out now.

If so, it might force Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Colorado, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to do the same, which triggers a very large payday for the league.

Oh, and did we mention that, as long as the Big XII is not dissolved, it is still a BCS member league?

Do we have your attention Conference USA and Mountain West?

It seems a bit desperate. How long can the Big XII stay a BCS conference with its best football schools missing? In a new formation this could be a very ordinary football-playing conference very quickly.

Why would schools want to give up their current spots in established conferences, especially those in the MWC, which is even closer to busting into the BCS itself with the addition of Boise State?

Then again, splitting $140 million AND all that NCAA men's basketball tournament money the other schools forfeit could be lucrative.

And so, we come to UTEP. The Miners have an astute former Kansas State WIldcat as their athletic director in Bob Stull. Don't think the phone lines haven't been burning from El Paso to Manhattan and Dallas. The possibility has to be tantalizing.

More than that, though -- when an opportunity like this springs up, the possibility must be explored. To not try would be criminal. 

C-USA isn't ready to make the BCS like the Mountain West. A conference payday like this league's would be unprecedented.

For the Miners, this would be a huge step up. The fact that the football would not quite be of BCS quality would actually help UTEP because it's obviously not a requirement.

And you want to talk some good basketball...Wow. 

Kansas, K-State, Baylor, Missouri and Memphis? Now that UTEP head coach Tim Floyd's NCAA blood tests came back negative, the Miners are poised to show themselves well, here.

Could UTEP muscle an invite? From what we're hearing, it doesn't appear the Miners are on Beebe's first round of invitations. 

Which doesn't mean they won't be, but it'll certainly require work.

We don't know if Bob Stull is hoping not to run into C-USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky and Neinas, the old hand brought in to introduce C-USA to the Big XII and to bring them aboard.

But in college sports' current atmosphere, they probably wouldn't blame him.

Heck, in college sports' current atmosphere, they may be trying to join him.

Comments

[Steve Deyoe]

Is the Sun Bowl being used as an enticement by UTEP? Seems like UTEP combined with the Sun Bowl would be a good addition to this conference configuration and CBS ought to be ok with the leftover Big 12 schools.